Page 30 of Silverbow (The Godsung Saga #1)

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Oryn

O ryn Brydove sat in the dimly lit common room of a shabby little inn in Windcross Wells.

A man with a voice like a creaky carriage axle plucked at a dulcimer and the din of voices was not enough to drown it out.

The serving maids were well past their prime and had little interest in serving, not that the food was so great that there was any rush to bring it to the table.

The rooms were none too clean and the beds lumpy, but they were cheap, and the ale and dicing were good.

Oryn didn’t care about the dicing, but he was accustomed to inns like the Wagon’s Respite even if he preferred to be out under the open sky.

It was difficult around a city as large as Windcross Wells.

They’d have to go miles out of the way to find a suitable camp, and his companions liked dicing, so here they sat with their boots sticking to the floorboards and that awful racket.

With black clad wielders skulking about, he had to keep a damper held firmly in place over his gifts, but after so many years, the strange emptiness he felt in his chest was dull.

Still, it made him feel exposed , even with the sword bearing the mark of a blademaster hanging at his hip. It made him grind his teeth.

Two of his companions had moved off to a corner table where dice rattled.

Shabby as the Wagon’s Respite was, Oryn caught the flash of silver amongst the coppers being pushed around the table.

Shouts and groans occasionally rose above what passed for music, indicating a particularly good or bad throw .

Colm waved at a bored looking serving maid and tapped his empty mug.

She looked intent on ignoring him until he flashed her a warm smile.

Suddenly, her steps quickened. Oryn couldn’t hear over the din, but he was certain her heart had just done the little leap that Colm’s smiles often provoked in mortal women.

She was at the table in a flash, refilling his drink, but when the girl turned her attention on Oryn, she flinched and skulked away.

Colm chuckled into his cup. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“About what?”

“Whatever it is that’s been troubling you.”

Emotion was easy enough to read with their keen senses - a tightening of a jaw or a flick of an eyebrow, the pounding of a heart or fluttering of a pulse – said much that words often didn’t.

And where ear and eye failed, the strongest emotions could often be read in scent, but Colm…

Colm could read more without trying than any man had a right to know, even when he wasn’t wielding his gifts. He just knew .

“Nothing,” Oryn growled.

A knowing smile turned up the corners of the spirit wielder’s mouth.

He took a sip of his ale and reclined back, letting a bulky arm sprawl across the back of the empty chair beside him.

“Look, the lads want to know if we’re going to ride all the way to Drozia with you bristling like a black daggertail. ”

“I am not-” He started to object, but the broad grin that split Colm’s face cut him off.

“You knocked the lad off his horse.”

Oryn did regret that, if only a bit. He’d let his temper get the better of him. “He talks too much.”

Colm laughed. “Yes, but that is not new, Oryn. You clotheslining the boy off his horse is. Next time you want to joust like a common knight, perhaps you ought to let your opponent know you’re jousting.”

He stared at the man in stony silence. Colm, immune to his glare, swirled the ale in his mug and studied the common room a moment, letting the silence between them stretch. “What happened between you and the girl?”

Colm didn’t feel the need to specify. They both knew which he meant.

“Nothing.”

“That’s the root of it, is it not?” Colm asked. When Oryn didn’t deign to reply, his companion chuckled again. “I was half surprised the man didn’t chase us all the way to Millford Green, the way you were staring at his daughter. ”

Oryn rolled a copper between his fingers, shifting his gaze over Colm’s shoulder to stare at nothing. He didn’t understand why, but the whole thing was… unsettling .

“And then when the lad offered his commentary , you went and unhorsed him.”

Oryn shrugged. “He should have kept it to himself.”

“It wasn’t his commentary that set you on edge.”

Oryn sighed. Colm really wasn’t going to let it go. “I could hear it.”

“The hum.”

They had been over this. No one else heard a thing.

Oryn nodded stiffly. For years, he’d been hunting the godsung gifts, but never had he heard one before.

It had been so loud, he’d hardly heard the man ask after Kiawa.

And when he pulled her scent to him on a whisper of wind, his air gift exploded from him in a torrent he hadn’t intended to wield and Oryn had to slam his damper down to cut it off.

That had been a shock. Never had his gifts spun out on their own accord.

They usually sat within him, waiting to be sung into the world like the refrains of old, sacred songs.

But he hadn’t called for those songs, hadn’t crafted those wieldings.

It was as if the gods themselves had. He sometimes felt they were trying to speak to him, but reading their will from the essence of the elements often left him guessing at interpretations.

The girl that smelled of lavender soap, smoke, and all the finer parts of a stable seemed to set his gifts surging, especially Mosphaera’s.

Or perhaps that was just because he was strongest in air.

He had thought the smoke marked her a fire wielder.

Air was sometimes drawn to fire, but none of them could feel a wielder’s spark within her.

None of them could sense a godsong resonating with their own, but there remained the matter of that strange hum only he could hear.

“I can’t help but feel she was trying to tell me something.”

Where most could only see the essence of gifts they possessed, the godsongs they were attuned to, Colm, strong in spirit, could see the essence of all five when called forth. He had seen Oryn’s wielding spiral. He knew which she he meant.

He drummed his fingers on the table. “Should we go back for her?”

Oryn ground his teeth as he felt his air gift stir. He felt it try to surge in his chest, straining to be let out. He splayed his hands on the table and grimaced. Never had he battled for control like he had these last days .

“And what?” Oryn asked when he quieted the Goddess of Air enough to speak. “Add kidnapping to our repertoire?”

“She was hardly a kid , not by their standards, anyway.”

Oryn regarded him flatly, but Colm was studying his splayed hands. “Is she telling you something now?”

“The girl seems to…unsettle her.”

The corners of Colm’s mouth quirked up in a small smile. “Interesting.”

“What?” Oryn snapped.

“It’s just interesting, is all.” Colm chuckled and held up his hands in surrender, pitching his voice low enough they would not be overheard. “I’ve never heard of a resonance with one of them .”

Oryn knew he meant the godsung gifts. They were not sensed the same way the pure godsongs were.

“And I’ve never heard of a resonance with one like you .”

He meant one the gods sometimes tried to speak to.

“But I’ve never met one of them at all. It raises the question, is it the gift? Or is it the girl? It is…interesting, is all.”

Sana’s gift was rare enough that they’d never met a Silverbow.

Given his way, Oryn would have taken her to sanctuary at once, but his offer had been declined.

Only the godsongs were susceptible to those gods forsaken artifacts that yielded control of one’s gift to another.

She should be safe enough, even if her gift would make her a weapon men would seek to wield.

Perhaps it was best she remained out of sight in the Westerlands.

“What do you know of the house?”

“Nothing,” Colm shrugged. “Newly raised. Of no real consequence.”

Oryn stared west as if he could peer through the leagues between them.

Like the wielding gifts, godsung gifts were believed to follow bloodlines, though they sometimes skipped so many generations, they were thought to have died out.

He set the copper spinning on the tabletop with a flick of his fingers and watched it land.

Pallas Davolier’s profile stared back at him.

“But why does it unsettle her?”

Colm shook his head. “I cannot say.”

Oryn spun the coin again and watched it come to a stop, balancing impossibly on its edge.

He darted a look at Colm, his brows climbing.

The coin finally wobbled and fell, Pallas Davolier’s face once again peering up at them.

Oryn stared at the coin. He’d never been much of a betting man, but perhaps…

Are you trying to tell me to go back for her?

He set it spinning and watched it suddenly halt and fall.

Once again, he was looking at the false king.

Bloody hell. What am I supposed to do, knock on the door and ask for a cup of tea?

Another spin, stop, and lamp light glinted off the man’s profile.

Do you really want me to go west?

Oryn was staring at the coin that only seemed to come up heads, wondering if Mosphaera or Nimala were responsible, too aware that Colm was staring at him when the dulcimer cut off with an abrupt twang and the buzz of the common room suddenly faded around them.

A pair of crimson coated soldiers had stomped in.

Eyes swiveled to the man who held a sheet of parchment.

He hardly looked at it as he cried his message.

“In the name of His Majesty the King, Pallas of House Davolier, High King of Estryia and Defender of the Dragon’s Dream…”

That Estryia’s monarch still claimed that title was ridiculous, and a Davolier king made it absurd. Oryn drummed his fingers on the tabletop impatiently.

“Lord Peytar Ralenet, High Lord of Pavia and His Majesty’s Master of Coin, offers the king’s bounty for the safe return of Miss Enya of House Ryerson in the Westerlands.”